Birmingham Mail news cutting from Monday, May 14th, 1962, about the building of BBC Pebble Mill.
Here is the copy of the article:
New Midland H.Q. Planned For BBC
Will be world’s first TV-radio centre
“Mail” TV Correspondent
The world’s first combined radio and television centre is to be built in Birmingham.
Mr H. J. Dunkerley, BBC Midland Region Controller, announced today that work is to start within a year on the erection of the new Broadcasting House for Midland Region. It will be on the nine-acre site at Pebblemill Road, Edgbaston.
Plans have been prepared by Mr J. Madin the Birmingham architect, and when it is brought into operation in 1965 it will replace the existing administrative and studio centres at Carpenter Road, Edgbaston, Broad Street and Gosta Green.
Final details of the structure are still being considered by the architect and BBC officials.
“There is no comparable project anywhere in the world as far as we have been able to discover,” said Mr Dunkerley, “for in every other area sound and TV have developed separately.”
3,000 episodes
In November the BBC is to hold a three-day exhibition at Birmingham Town Hall to celebrate the Corporation’s 40th anniversary. The first transmission in the Midlands was on November 15, 1922.
On July 27, “The Archers,” radio’s longest running serial, will reach its 3,000th episode.
Mr Dunkerley said that although there had been some fall in the size of its mid-week audience, it now appealed to an audience averaging 10,000,000 when the omnibus edition goes out on Sunday mornings.
